The former deputy director of Yak Service Airlines, Vadim Timofeev, has been charged in connection with the plane crash which killed the entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl hockey squad last September.

­Investigative Committee’s spokesman, Vladimir Markin, told RIA-Novosti that Timofeev is accused of violating the rules of air traffic safety and air transport operation.

According to the investigators, the official was in charge of flight operations at Yak Service, with control of the pilots’ qualification being his direct responsibility.

"By putting the crew in the air Timofeev broke the rules of air transport operations. At the moment of the disaster, that crew wasn’t entitled to fly,” Markin stressed. “Timofeev had allowed the captain to fly based on falsified documents, and the co-pilot hadn’t finished his training on the Yak-42 plane and had no right to be in air.”

The Yak-42 aircraft carrying the KHL side Lokomotiv crashed a few minutes after taking off from Yaroslavl airport on September 7, 2011.

44 people died in the accident, with engineer Aleksandr Sizov being the only survivor.

Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee has held pilots Andrey Solomentsev and Igor Zhevelov responsible for the crash as they weren’t qualified to fly the plane.

Yak Service’s license was revoked two weeks after the tragedy, leading to the airline going out of business.

It took Lokomotiv a year to recruit a new competitive squad as the Yaroslavl side made their KHL comeback by collecting a 5-2 win at Sibir Novosibirsk on Thursday.